Integrated circuits (ICs) are often subjected to electrostatic discharge (ESD) events through contact with a charged body (e.g., a human) that cause high voltages at one or more pins, pads or terminals of the IC. ESD events can damage an IC through thermal runaway and resultant junction shorting and/or dielectric breakdown causing gate junction shorting in metal oxide semiconductor (MOS) circuits when the amount of charge exceeds the capability of the electrical conduction path through the IC. Protection circuits can be provided in an IC, such as clamp circuits to shunt ESD current between two supply nodes. However, ESD shunt transistors are typically very large in order to conduct significant amounts of ESD-related current. The large size of the shunt transistors reduces the space for other circuitry in an integrated circuit, and also increases shunt transistor leakage current thereby increasing circuit power consumption.